Less than nine months after the Babylon upgrade, DEXs such as CaviarNine, Ociswap, DeFi Plaza, and money markets such as WEFT have amassed more than $30m of TVL. DApps such as ShardSpace, Trove and XRD Domains offer some of the slickest end-user experiences in Web3. Memecoins such as Early and Hug have captured the imaginations of the community and onboarded waves of new users to the Radix ecosystem. There’s a huge amount of excitement for the upcoming launches of the NFT marketplace Foton and perpetuals exchange Surge.

To further fuel these successes, Radix Publishing is pleased to announce the launch of Radix Foundry. This program aims to incubate dApps in high-potential categories, driving significant growth in users, TVL, and on-chain activity within the Radix ecosystem.

Projects participating in Radix Foundry will receive marketing, business, and technical support from RDX Works and up to $250k in funding.

Here’s what you need to know.

High Potential dApp Categories

Today’s crypto users primarily want to: 

1. hold or send value to anyone in the world
2. have liquid markets to trade tokens
3. earn yield on capital
4. have fun.

What does the Radix ecosystem need to meet these demands and ignite a cycle of growing users and liquidity? Radix Foundry seeks to answer these questions by inviting proposals from projects in the following categories:

1. Lending & Borrowing Money Markets

Money markets are vital for the success of DeFi ecosystems as they allow lenders to earn interest on deposited capital, creating sources of yield, and borrowers to gain leverage, leading to better capital allocation and market efficiency. Examples like Aave ($10B TVL) and Compound ($2.2B TVL) illustrate their importance in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.

There is a significant opportunity to develop the “Aave of Radix,” fostering competition and innovation, boosting on-chain activity, and enabling foundational financial dApps like yield optimizers, fixed-rate lending apps, derivatives, and more.

2. Real World Assets (RWA)

There’s a reason RWA is one of the most hyped narratives in crypto today: it’s because both sides of the market stand to benefit:

• By tokenizing off-chain assets, issuers can access new, global, permissionless, 24/7 capital pools, creating liquidity in previously illiquid assets.
• Web3 users gain access to previously off-chain assets for investment, speculation, yield generation, and collateral. This global liquidity removes geographical and financial restrictions.

Radix’s native assets offer predictable, transparent behaviors, creating a unique opportunity to build RWAs on Radix and leverage its asset-oriented design. Prominent examples of successful RWA projects include Ondo Finance, Mountain Protocol, and OpenEden.

3. Yield Derivatives

Yield derivatives are crucial financial products, allowing users to control future cash flows, speculate on interest rate changes, hedge risks, manage portfolios, and increase leverage. DeFi’s yield from staking, fees, interest, and RWAs will drive demand for these derivatives, as shown by Pendle's recent success. 

With approximately $250m  in Liquid Stake Units (LSUs) within the Radix ecosystem, alongside yield from money markets, RWAs, and perpetual exchanges, yield derivative dApps on Radix have significant market potential today and even greater potential tomorrow.

To learn more, see Yield Derivatives on Radix: A $250m opportunity today, far more tomorrow, and the recently completed Scrypto Yield Derivatives Challenge.

4. NFT Pro Trading

NFTs captured the world’s imagination in the last cycle, yet the innovation in NFT trading infrastructure lags behind that of fungible tokens. A simple marketplace for buying or swapping NFTs isn’t enough—Web3 needs professional tools and financial innovations as sophisticated as those found in centralized and decentralized exchanges.

To fill this gap, NFT Pro Trading dApps like Blur and Tensor have demonstrated significant user and volume growth over the past year. These platforms offer powerful features that enable NFT collectors and traders to visualize, chart, and analyze different collections. They allow users to set complex trading strategies, such as sweeping the floor of collections with a few clicks, setting adjustable royalties, or providing no-fee trading. These features are complemented by user-incentivization strategies like quests, leaderboards, and referrals.

Radix’s native NFTs are truly special: they’re actually in your account, you can’t get drained, and you can see them immediately in the Radix Wallet. Combined with Radix’s thriving NFT community, the Radix Ecosystem needs sophisticated NFT trading infrastructure to further accelerate NFTs on Radix.

5. Launchpad

Tokens are at the heart of Web3. They provide the ability to instantly create incentive structures to align interests between anyone on the internet, form communities, and allocate capital. Infrastructure to support projects in launching tokens is therefore key for the growth of an ecosystem.

That infrastructure is the Launchpad - a combination of dApp and organization that can help projects gain access to liquid capital, navigate the complex legal, compliance, and regulatory aspects of token launches, and support in marketing and distributing the token to thousands of new users. 

Seedify, DAOMaker, and Decubate are examples of launchpads that have seen success to date. There’s an opportunity to be the prime launchpad in the Radix ecosystem, capturing the support and issuance for new projects launching and offering the hottest tokens on Radix.

6. Stablecoins & Collateralized Debt Position (CDP)

Stablecoins are arguably crypto’s most practical use case today. They allow users to transfer fiat-denominated value anywhere around the world in a matter of seconds. We are only reminded of how powerful this is when we have to go back to our bank to send an international payment, wait 3 days, and get charged $30. 

The Radix ecosystem will need decentralized stablecoins, and CDPs not only generate stablecoins but also enable users to borrow or lend, gaining leverage or earning yield, similar to money markets. MakerDAO with Dai was one of the original catalysts of DeFi on Ethereum, and examples include Synthetix and Liquity innovating new models. The Radix ecosystem will need its own decentralized stablecoins and CDPs to thrive.

7. Liquid Staking & Restaking

Eigenlayer has taken Web3 by storm, showcasing that liquid staked tokens can be “restaked” to support other use cases, such as provide cryptoeconomic security for other networks or be used as staked collateral to arbitrate disputes.  

The Radix ecosystem holds approximately $250 million in Liquid Stake Units (LSUs), representing the staked positions of thousands of XRD token holders. While CaviarNine’s LSULP has been notably successful, LSUs remain underutilized, highlighting an opportunity for innovation in Radix DeFi. This presents a chance to create new use cases and support seamless liquidity and trading across LSUs.

Radix’s native liquid staking significantly reduces the risk of liquid stake tokens compared to other networks, and provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to leverage Radix’s innate technology advantages to be at the forefront of liquid staking and restaking DeFi, one of the emerging narratives of 2024.

Who you are 

Founders and entrepreneurs who:

• Have a great idea to seize on an untapped opportunity and plug existing gaps in the market.
• Can leverage the full powers of the Radix Stack to build something unique and innovative with mainstream-ready user experiences.
• Possess the business and technical acumen to transform ideas into successful products, communities, and tokens.
• Have a proven track record for user, liquidity, and volume growth in either the Radix Ecosystem or other ecosystems.

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What You’ll Receive

• Market research and insights on business opportunities
• Funding up to $250,000 in XRD
• Mentorship from the RDX Works leadership team 
• Introductions to third parties such as VCs, partners, exchanges, or market makers where needed
• Coordinated Go-To-Market strategy with Radix Publishing
• Exclusive co-marketing opportunities

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How to apply

The Radix Foundry Program is a highly selective program designed to onboard high-potential products and teams to Radix. The best way to get started is to apply for a Radix Booster Grant (up to 160k USD in funding). Learn more and apply:

Apply for a grant to build on Radix

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If you think a high-potential dApp category is missing or have other ideas for what would benefit the Radix ecosystem, please start the discussion in Telegram, Discord, or email hello@radixdlt.com.